Innovation Union

The Innovation Union is one of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

The Innovation Union connects the future of Europe with its power to innovate and provides solutions by improving the conditions and access to finance for research and innovation in Europe, in order to ensure that innovative ideas can be turned into products and services that create growth and jobs.

More specifically the policies in the Innovation Union aim to do three things: make Europe into a world-class science performer; revolutionize the way public and private sectors work together, notably through Innovation Partnerships; and remove bottlenecks – like expensive patenting, market fragmentation, slow standard setting and skill shortages – that currently prevent ideas getting quickly to market.
WssTP has been a strong supporter of the Innovation Union. Overcoming fragmentation and duplication, facilitation of technology transfer, and the establishment of an enabling framework in the widest sense have also been identified by our platform as the major challenges for innovation in the water sector.
Loyal to our vision that the ‘European water sector should be the leading centre of expertise for providing safe, clean and affordable water services while protecting nature by 2030”, WssTP also supported the Commission in the rollout of the EIP on water since the concept was first mentioned in the Innovation Union Flagship of EU Commissioner Geoghegan-Quinn for Research and Innovation.